Saturday, August 29, 2009

Week 2: Going Virtual

Very
interesting week. The Hong Kong health department closed down our
Middle School last week because the absences from Swine Flu had gone
through the roof. That means the new teachers had not had a chance to
get up to speed with our technology, and the returning teachers were
still getting their lessons organized for the start of school. So the
tech department (all 4 Facilitators, including the MS one who was
attending via Skype as he was home sick himself) got together and ran
mini-workshops all day Thursday for the MS teachers. We taught them
everything from how to upload assignments, to working with google.docs,
to making wikis, to putting assignments on the school calendar, to
holding remote lessons via Skype. It was fantastic, and having one Tech
Facilitator present on a computer screen modeled the whole thing
beautifully.

With the spread of Swine Flu, the bets are that our
Lower Primary will be closed this week, and maybe the HS also. We're all
going to get a high-speed dose of going virtual, and I'm looking
forward to it in a big way.